MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- A Cuban woman tucked herself inside a wooden crate the size of a small filing cabinet and had herself shipped from the Bahamas to Miami aboard a cargo plane.

The woman, whose name was not released, will be allowed to stay in the United States. A cargo crew found her curled up inside the crate after unloading it late Tuesday at the Miami airport.

"Certainly she's lucky to be alive," said Zach Mann, spokesman for Customs and Border Protection.

Under the so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy, Cubans who reach U.S. soil are usually allowed to stay, while those who are picked up at sea are sent home. Federal officials released no information on how the woman got from Cuba to the Bahamas.

The 180-mile route is flown by a third-party contractor for the delivery service DHL, which said it was investigating.

The flight lasted only an hour, so the woman, described as being in her early 20s, would have been exposed to the cold for only a short period, Mann said.

Earlier this year, a homesick man who shipped himself in a wooden cargo crate from New York to Dallas was fined $1,500 and sentenced to four months of house arrest for being a stowaway.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press.